Cindy Filo (1969 - ) performer.

Cindy grew up in Samoa in a Seventh Day Adventist family, and became a fa’afafine, the traditional transgender role in Samoa. Like many modern fa’afafines, Cindy has adopted western morés and is much like a drag queen, although she lives as female, and is disapproved of by the elders for this reason.

By the age of 15 she was the first night-club female vocalist in Samoa. She had an affair with a member of the Australian High Commission, who was transferred back home, but he quit his job and returned to Samoa to be with her.

In 1989 Cindy toured New Zealand, was a great success and stayed until 1996 when she returned to Samoa and started her own cabaret show that became a must for every tourist. She was also crowned Miss My Girl and Miss South Pacific Beauty Queen.

In 1999 she went to the USA for a one-off show in Carson City, but the trip was expanded as a tour. In 2002 she won Sydney’s Poly Talent Quest. She specializes in impersonations of Tina Turner.

• Heather Croall (dir). Paradise Bent: Boys Will Be Girls in Samoa. Scr: Karin Altmann, with Cindy. Australia 51 mins 1999.
• “Cindy of Samoa as ‘Tina Turner’”. Tornado Management Limited. www.austinpowers.co.nz/legends/tina_turner.htm.
• "’I'm a woman with extras’ - Cindy of Samoa”. Gay NZ. www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/2/article_6074.php.

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I hope that no-one is still reading Margaret Mead on Samoa. She never learned the language, couldn't tell when when people where having her on, and never noticed the fa'afafines.

Atisone Seiuli (1976–1998) sex worker, performer.

Saoaumaga Atisone Kenneth Seiuli was born to a Mormon family in American Samoa.

She was able to express her femininity as a teenager using the name Shalimar (after the French fragrance). She was cheerleading captain at school, and was Miss American Samoa Island Queen 1993.

By 1996 she had moved to Los Angeles and begun transition as Atisone Seiuli.

She already had one prostitution conviction, when on May 2, 1997 she was caught by police in the vehicle of film star Eddie Murphy, and arrested for violation of a ruling from the previous conviction. Within a few hours this was a media event. The National Enquirer paid her bail in exchange for an exclusive.

This was her career breakthrough. She acted in a pornography film, and became the ‘House Madame’ at the 7969 nightclub where she performed to celebrities as a dominatrix with live snakes.

She was troubled by death threats from Eddie Murphy fans. On April 22, 1998 she was dead, clad in her underwear only, outside her apartment building. The coroner concluded that she had locked herself out of her fifth-floor apartment and fallen while attempting to swing from the building roof to an open window using a towel.

• Mark Ebner & Jack Cheevers. “The Bagman”. Hollywood Interrupted. March 23, 2006. www.hollywoodinterrupted.com/archives/the_bagman.phtml.
• “Atisone Seiuli”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atisone_Seiuli.